expressing spiritual stuff through art. Art: it's not just the medium, the end result, the imagination or the skill or what people think of it that defines it, it is as much the human process of human re-creation that express the indefinable essence of what it means to be human. To engage and to try and appreciate art is a journey of embracing community; trying to see beyond yourself and your own world to the world somebody else experiences. It is intensely spiritual, it is the language of God. It embodies the mission of God and the human response.

Hope in confusion

Steve took an interesting line in the looking at John the Baptist’s speeches and showing how John began to question if Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah perhaps because he wasn’t fulfilling the expectations of John, particularly the bit about ‘captives being released’! The question of doubt: “Is Jesus really God?” Are we still waiting for Jesus to prove himself by answering our prayers or do we find that in our holding on to Jesus in the midst of life’s problems that the Joy of the Lord is our strength? Do we find peace in knowing that God is with us? The image gradually compiled from small images that accumulated along the way, from scripture, from the litany, from hymns and the sermon.

The image speaks of the signs of hope in the desert and in the dark that somehow leave us confused about what God is doing because things don’t seem to meet our expectations. Yet we journey on in the midst of our confusion with expectant hope, searching for our Saviour’s footsteps to follow, trusting that we will one day arrive in the promised kingdom. But he is with us! The King has been with us all along the way. The signs are not just signs, they are also the evidence of the kingdom come and not yet here.